Beautiful Days by Anna Godbersen

Hardcover, 358 pages

Published September 20th 2011 by HarperCollins

ISBN

0061962686 (ISBN13: 9780061962684)

edition language

English

original title

Beautiful Days

series

Bright Young Things #2 

For the bright young things of 1929, the beautiful days seem endless, filled with romance and heartbreak, adventure and intrigue, friendship and rivalry.

After a month in New York, Cordelia Grey and Letty Larkspur are small-town girls no longer. They spend their afternoons with Astrid Donal at the Greys' lush Long Island estate and their nights in Manhattan's bustling metropolis. But Letty's not content to be a mere socialite. She is ready at last to chase her Broadway dreams - no matter the cost.

Cordelia is still reeling from the death of her father at the hands of Thom Hale, the man she thought she loved. Now she is set to honor Darius Grey's legacy... and take her revenge.

Promised to Cordelia's half brother, Astrid is caught up in a world of dazzling jewels and glittering nights - and the sparkle is blinding. Charlie Grey is a gangster playing a dangerous game; and for Astrid, Cordelia, and Letty, the stakes could be deadly... 

 

 My Review

Think, Bugsy Malone, and you'll have the perfect setting for this kind of book, where the main people on stage are the fancy women who sing and look glamorous. Where looks are important, figures are slim and well kept, and everything is about making sure that the heirarchy is kept in order. The people who are meant to be at the top, are up the top. I really enjoyed this book, though was somewhat hesitant to enjoy it at first. I think a large part of me jsut expected it to be very somewhat old fashioned and not to my taste or liking. But instead the novel itself was very envoking and engaging in the sense that it let my imagination run wild, so that I could image and see everything.

I love the way the three main female characters were all connected to each other and that they all had different personalities and life style choices. It just showed how we do not have to be the same in order to be friends. Yet at the same time, the author showed how complications and barriers can and do get in the way, how they can cause divisions between them, and make things seem a little more complicated and on edge. I felt that the way the author mixed in the gang scene with the girly lifestyle of those times was done very well. In many ways it was almost as if I was actually reading the movie for it all flowed fluidly and the imagery was alive and vibrant throughout the whole novel.

There was mystery, drama, romance, crime, vengence and fun. This book just seemed to contain everything that a book should have and yet it was not dull nor boring. It was exciting and exagerated and yet completely down to earth, in the sense that you could imagine all these things happening back in those times. I did like the three different romance stories though each one tugged on my heart string in different ways. I felt that the romance bit touched the females and the gang bit perhaps the males. There was just a lot going for this book and I really did enjoy it. It was one of those books where you don't have to read the first one in the series in order to understand it, but at the same time it leaves you wanting to find out.

My rating